Pippin; A Wandering Flame Part 17

It was near midnight. The rain had ceased, and a dense white mist was rising from the drenched earth. A breeze came sighing through the branches of the trees, rustling the gra.s.ses round the hiding hole; it was answered by a low moan from the sodden figure that lay stretched in the hollow under the rock. It was his last moan, Myron thought. Death was coming; this white mist was his shroud. They would find him here--or maybe they would not. Maybe his bones would whiten in this dismal spot, and years after, the traveler--Hark! what was that? A sound, that was not wind or trees or gra.s.ses: a long, low, wailing cry.

The wretched boy struggled up on one elbow and peered through the thick white curtain, then, with a smothered shriek, he scrambled to his hands and knees. Something was there! Something whiter than the mist; something that moved--

"Help!" cried the Red Ruffian. "Murder! Help!"

"Hus.h.!.+" said Pippin. "Hold your darned noise! _Steel is sharp!_"

"Oh! oh, dear! oh--_blood is red_! Is it you, Moonlighter? Why are you--why are you all in white?"

"Make folks think I was the ha'nt, bonehead! What'd you s'pose? Cute trick, I thought!"

Pippin stepped down into the hollow and threw off the sheet that covered him.

"Well, how are you, young feller?" he asked cheerfully.

"I'm dyin'!" said the boy feebly. "Tell the folks I--"

"Oh, shucks! Here, set up--so! It's stopped rainin'. My! you are wet, ain't you? Feelin' sick? I expect that cigar _was_ a mite--_here!_ lean up against the ledge here, and take a drink!"

Reader, have you ever tasted spice-draught? Its basic principle is peppermint. To this is added cinnamon, cloves, ca.s.sia, and a liberal dash of cayenne pepper. "Temp'rance toddy," I have heard it called, but there is nothing temperate about it. "S'archin'" is the adjective Pippin used.

"Take a good swig!" he urged, putting the bottle to the boy's lips.

"It's hot stuff, I tell ye!"

The boy drank; next moment he was on his feet, coughing, dancing round, and holding his throat. A howl of anguish broke from him, but Pippin checked it with a hand over his mouth.

"Easy, boy, easy! 'Twill het you up good; nothin' like it, Mis'--that is, they claim. Don't you feel it livenin' of you up? That's hearty! Now you'll find your legs. Lean against me if you're wobbly still. Time we was on our job! Foller, Red Ruffi'n!"

As they went along, Pippin explained the nature of the job. A soft snap, just the thing for a green hand. Nice, quiet folks, sound sleepers, old-fas.h.i.+oned lock--pick it with one hand while you eat your dinner with the other. Honest, if he didn't feel that Red Ruffi'n _needed_ a soft snap, he wouldn't hardly have had the heart to ease them, they _was_ such nice folks. Been real good to him, too, and would be to any one come nigh 'em, but Red Ruffi'n was his pal, and pals were bound to see each other through.

"S'pose--s'pose we was pinched!" said Red Ruffi'n, stumbling along over the plashy ground. "What would--"

"Sh.o.r.eham!" Pippin gave a lively sketch of the place; the Red Ruffian shuddered and coughed.

"Moonlighter," he said, after a pause; "I hadn't ought to get you into this. I--I ain't feelin' well, either; s'pose we--what say?"

Pippin took his arm with a grip as firm as it was quiet.

"Testin' me, are ye?" he laughed. "Tryin' to see if I'd crawl--what?

There's no crawl in me, not an inch! Just wait till we get in where it's warm and dry, and you'll see things different: not but I know you was only foolin'. Crawl _now_, when everything's all ready? Gee! I would be a softy, wouldn't I? Here's the gully! Now you go first and I'll foller and keep watch behind; stop when you hear me peep like a chicken!"

With faltering steps the unhappy Ruffian crept along the gully, keeping well in the shadow, starting at every stray cat, every sc.r.a.p of wind-whisked paper. Pippin, stepping lightly and softly a few yards behind, whistled noiselessly, and pursued an imaginary conversation with Mrs. Baxter.

"Just you trust me, Mis' Baxter, and you'll see. Why, you don't think I'd take all this trouble, and _give_ all this trouble, if I weren't certain sure that I was right? 'He leadeth me,' you know, ma'am, and the Lord is sure leadin' me this time. There's no harm will come of it, but only good, if I'm not a bonehead from Bonetown. Now see--"

He peeped low, like a day-old chicken; the slinking figure in advance stopped.

It was, as Pippin had said, an easy lock to pick. A stout hairpin of Mrs. Baxter's did the trick; a nice tool, Pippin p.r.o.nounced it gravely.

The door swung open, revealing blackness. The Red Ruffian, shrinking back, found himself gently but firmly propelled forward; he stumbled over the threshold and the door closed noiselessly behind him. "This way!" Pippin guided him through a pa.s.sage, over another threshold. "Here we be!" Closing another door, Pippin produced a match, lighted a bit of candle. "The bakery!" he whispered. "The money is in here! Hus.h.!.+ Take your shoes off; one of 'em squeaks."

The flickering light shone on the white tiles, the glittering enamel, the black doors of the ovens; the further corners of the room were in deep shadow.

"Did it squeak loud? Do you think--do you think any one heard? Hark!

What was that?"

"Nothin'! Mouse, mebbe! Now look! The cash is in that box, see? Under the table there; make it out? Now, Red Ruffi'n, this is your job, and you are goin' to have the credit of it. I'll hold the light; you reach down and get the box--"

Mr. Baxter had felt all along that when the time came, he would know what to do. A calm man, he had followed Pippin's instructions implicitly, had now stood patiently for an hour in his dark corner, leaning on his "peel," the long broad-bladed, paddle-like implement which bore the loaves to and from the oven. Mrs. Baxter, in the shop, might palpitate and wring her hands and moan, only restrained by thoughts of Buster slumbering above; Mr. Baxter awaited his moment, and it came.

By the flickering candlelight, he saw a cringing, trembling figure creep forward, and bend over, displaying to his view a broad expanse of trouser. To the father of Buster, that expanse suggested but one thing in the world. Raising the peel, he brought it down with a resounding thwack which sent the boy flat on his face under the table and brought Mrs. Baxter shrieking from the shop.

"Elegant!" said Pippin. "Mr. Baxter, sir, that was simply elegant!"

An hour later the Red Ruffian, full, dry, and warm, a plaster over his injured nose, lay in Pippin's bed; and Pippin ("as per contract with the Elder," he told himself, "lettin' alone its bein' right and fittin' so to do") sat on the edge of the bed and looked for the grace of G.o.d.

He began by explaining his plot in full: how he had been at the Poor Farm, heard Mr. Bailey's story, and promised to find the boy if he could; how the Lord had come into it and played right into his hand; how the excellent baker and his wife had agreed to help; how everything had went smooth as greased lightnin'--he never see anything work out neater and prettier.

"Here! Take another drink of the lemonade! 'Tis some different from spice-draught. Gee, wasn't that something fierce! I expect it kep' you from pneumony, though!"

Pippin held the lemonade to the boy's lips, and patted the pillows tenderly, as a woman might. Meeting his eyes, dark with shame, misery, and reproach, he beamed on him benevolently.

"There!" he said. "I know how you feel. Look at it one way, 'twas a mean trick I played you, a mean, low-down trick. I ask your pardon for that!

But look at here! I had to stop you, hadn't I? I'd pa.s.sed my word, and, too, the Lord bid me. No gettin' away from that. Well, now, if I'd sat down there in the wood road that day, talked to you real fatherly and pious, told you thus and so, and asked wouldn't you be a good boy and go back to the farm and hoe potatoes--" The boy made a restless motion.

Pippin laid a quiet hand on his arm. "Rest easy! I'll come to that presently! If I'd have done that, would you have listened to me? Not you! You'd ha' laughed at me for a gospel shark, and you'd have up and gone after that mean skunk (you notice he never turned round to look what become of you?) fast as you could pick up your heels. Then what?

Say you'd caught up with him and gone on to the next town, and started in breakin' and enterin'! Well, what say? Why, then you'd ben pinched and run in. Yes siree Bob! You never was built for a crook, my lad; you're too slow, and you're too--call it clumpsy. You've no quicksilver in your toes, nor yet in your fingers. You'd ben run in, and then you'd gone to Sh.o.r.eham. First offense, they might let you off with six months--more likely a year, but _say_ six months! For six months, then, you'd worked as you never worked before in your little life, alongside of men--well--the Lord made 'em, amen!--only they ain't the kind you're used to. What I would say, there's no _ro_mance about Sh.o.r.eham, not a mite, and don't you forget it! (Say, ain't this a dandy bed? I betcher!

And all ready for the man that comes after me. We'll come to that b.u.mby, too.) And if you try to hook it, or misbehave anyways, you get put in solitary. Know what that means? It means four walls with nothin'

on 'em except the bricks, walls four feet apart one way and seven the other, and a grated door between you and anything else. It means twenty-four hours every day and each of 'em half of the whole, seems though! No! You can't understand, 'cause you haven't ben there. It means no word spoke or heard excep' when your victuals is pa.s.sed in, and mighty few then, and what there is is no special pleasure to hear. Now, bo, that is what I've ben through, and that is what I've saved you from.

Now what about it? Did I do right, or did I do wrong?"

"Right!" faltered the boy. "Oh, Moonlighter--"

"Hold on! Forget that! My name's Pippin, and that's what you call me from now on. I had to _show_ you what I used to be, or you'd never have listened to me; _now_, I'm an honest man, and there's n.o.body I can't look in the face. Pippin's my name, and straight is my natur'. Praise the Lord! Amen! Well, sir, that is what I done. Now the question is, what next? And here comes in Mr. and Mrs. Baxter. Well, those folks are as good as they make 'em; they're as good as your Uncle and Aunt Bailey, and more is not to be said. They know all about me, and all about you.

I'm leavin' 'em in a day or two, for good; and gorry, what do you think them two Bakin' Angels is ready to do? They stand ready to take you and make a baker of you. Now--rest easy! I got to get it all off my chest!

Bakin' is as nice a trade, as _pretty_ an all-round trade, as a man can ask for in this world. If I hadn't other things I'd undertaken to do--well, never mind that! Here you can stay, if you're a mind to, and if you feel like you've had your bellyful of breakin' and enterin', and like that; work in daylight and sunlight and free air, and eat choice food, and hear kind, decent, pleasant language and never anything else.

That's what you've ben used to all your life, you'll say; yes, but there's more to it. Here you are in a town, and folks all round you, boys of your own age, nice clean fellers like you--you needn't winch!

The dirt ain't grimed into you yet; 'twill wash off, you see!--boys to chin with, and play baseball with, and football; girls too, nice, pretty, refined young ladies, comin' in to buy creamcakes, and--green gra.s.s! I certingly shall miss those young ladies!--and--go to singin'

school evenin's, and church meetin', and like that, and--well, that, sir, is what we offer, against the life of a crook. You balance them two in your mind, and think it over a bit!"

He made a motion with his hand, and turning his face away, was about to take counsel with himself, when the boy spoke hastily.

"Mr. Pippin," he said, "I--no need to think it over! I thank you a thousand times. I'm a fool, but I didn't know it before. Now I see it clear, and I thank you--I--I can't say what I feel, but I do sure feel it. I'd stay here glad and thankful, and I'd do my best, sir, honestly I would, and try to make good; but--but--"

"Well?" Pippin's eyes were very bright, he bent forward eagerly. "Well, youngster? What stands in the way?"

"Aunt and Uncle!" broke forth the boy. "I've been mean--mean as dirt, and they so good to me. If they'll let me, and if Mr. Baxter can wait, say a week, I'll come back more thankful than I've words to say; but first I must go home--and--"